Nikki Haley assails Donald Trump for continued silence on Navalny death
- Alexei Navalny’s unexpected death at the age of 47 at an Arctic penal colony has generated international outrage
- Nikki Haley has targeted Donald Trump on foreign policy in recent days as she fights for the Republican 2024 nomination
Donald Trump’s last remaining Republican rival for the US election in November bashed the ex-president on Sunday for his continued silence over the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his recent outburst over Nato.
The Trump campaign, asked for comment, has directed reporters to a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform that says: “America is no longer respected because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the World is thinking”.
The post does not mention Navalny, Russia or Putin.
Hundreds detained in Russia at Navalny memorial events, rights group says
The suggestion cast a pall over a major global security conference in Munich, Germany drawing a warning from Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that Trump should not “undermine” the alliance’s security.
Biden also lashed out at Trump’s remark as “dangerous” and “un-American”.
Haley, the former UN ambassador under Trump, has not spared Biden from foreign policy criticism, but she called her former boss’ Nato comment “bone-chilling”.
“All he did in that one moment was empower Putin,” she told ABC.
“He sided with a guy that kills his political opponents, he sided with a thug that arrests American journalists and holds them hostage, and he sided with a guy who wanted to make a point to the Russian people: ‘don’t challenge me in the next election or this will happen to you’.”